An Overbearing Legacy
by Missy Skywalker
Summary: Elicia Hughes was tired of trying to live up to her father's reputation, so on the night of her thirteenth birthday, she decided to run away. Luckily, she gets interrupted by someone who knows what losing a parent is like.
For as long as Elicia remembered, her father's friends would always come over to visit her on her birthday. When she was younger, they would congregate during her birthday party with her friends from school, but as she got older, they began arriving after her party was over and she was full of birthday cake, and they would talk to her about her dad.

They would tell her stories about how brave and smart and dedicated he was. And how much he loved his family, and how he was a good soldier and a wonderful friend. She would sit around and listen to Uncle Roy and Aunt Riza and various other Uncles who happened to be in town. For years she didn't realize that some came into Central just to visit for her birthday.

At first, she loved it. It was a chance to see her favorite extended family members, and they would talk about her _dad,_ the coolest guy in the universe. But then suddenly she stopped enjoying it and started dreading it.

And she wasn't even sure why.

Maybe it was because these people, her dad's friends, got to spend so much time with him and she could barely remember him. She held onto glimpses of his face and tiny moments she wasn't sure she didn't imagine.

Maybe it was because the more she heard stories about her dad, the more her own memories, already distant and faded, began receding and getting replaced by the image of her father that they remembered. And sometimes they didn't match up.

Maybe it was because at some point they had run out of "good" stories to tell, and now just recycled ones she'd heard dozens of times, like her father could be boiled down to only a handful of stories now that he was gone.

But maybe most of all it was because they expected amazing things from her because she was the Great Maes Hughes' daughter, and if he was so perfect, then his daughter must be equally so. And she didn't feel perfect. She didn't feel like the daughter of this perfect family man and the perfect soldier. She had average grades and an average life in Central. She was just Elicia Hughes and she wished that would be enough.

It was the night of her thirteenth birthday, after she'd undergone the usual birthday traditions, when she decided that she was going to run away to a place where no one had ever heard of Maes Hughes. Where she could just be Elicia, the regular girl with crooked teeth.

It was past midnight when she'd finally finished packing all of her important items: some clothes, a few books, and a few of the birthday gifts she'd unwrapped earlier in the day. Oh, and a few snacks for the road. She tip-toed over the creaky wooden panel by her window and snuck to the front door, listening every few seconds for any movement. Her mom should be sleeping (after all the talk of Maes Hughes she always cried herself to sleep when she thought Elicia couldn't hear). Elicia turned the knob carefully, threw her bag over her shoulder, and closed the door behind her. She felt freer already, even if she didn't exactly have a destination or any kind of plan.

"Elicia, what are you doing?"

She jumped.

She looked up to find Alphonse standing there sheepishly, and suddenly Elicia panicked.

"Al! Um. I was just going for a walk?" she said, inwardly grimacing. She was done for.

"With all of your things?" he asked with a smile. But before she even had the chance to confess, he nodded, and said, "ok."

Elicia didn't know what to do, awkwardly standing in the hallway outside of her apartment, her bag full of clothes slung over her shoulder.

"Sorry I'm late," Alphonse said. "I meant to make it for your birthday but I missed it. I lost track of time and missed my connection in East City."

"It's okay," she said.

"Do you mind having a companion during this walk of yours?" Alphonse asked.

"Huh? Right, a walk. No, sure, you can come."

They left the building in an awkward silence, and although it was in the wee hours of the morning, Alphonse strode down the Central avenue like he'd planned this walk from the beginning, and she did her best to keep up.

"Wanna tell me why you were running away?" he asked as they turned the corner onto the busiest street of her neighborhood. It had street lights, but they were only bright enough to illuminate the pavement directly below them, leaving spotlights of clarity in the darkness.

"No."

"That's fine," Alphonse said with a smile. "Everyone from Resembool sends their best. Winry and Brother would have loved to be here, but they just had Baby #3, and they're in over their heads." He shook his head as he spoke, clearly fond of "baby #3." She was surprised he wasn't pressing the issue of her runaway scheme, but she wasn't complaining.

"Al?" she asked after a brief period of silence. "Why did you come visit me today?"

"It is your birthday, isn't it?" he asked frowning suddenly. "Did I mix up the dates?"

"No," she said. "But why does everyone come and visit me on my birthday?"

He sighed, and his pace slowed. She matched his stride, and even though it was nighttime outside and her mom always worried about the dangers of the Central streets, she wasn't nervous when she was with Al. Even so, there was no one around except for the occasional car. It was a bit windy, so she was glad she'd packed her newest jacket, though it didn't do her much good now, stuck at the bottom of her bag.

"Your father loved you more than anything else in the world," Alphonse said. "Visiting you is honoring his memory. You were his most precious person in the whole world. And he wasn't afraid to show it with all of his photographs." Al smiled the smile that all of her father's friends smiled. It hinted at a distant fondness with vacant eyes, as they were lost in memories she'd never know.

"It doesn't even feel like they're visiting me. They just want to talk about my dad," she said, trying not to pout. It was easy to talk to Alphonse. Although he was older than she was, he didn't hold himself like Uncle Roy did. Al felt like a cool older brother. "It's like… everyone always says how great my dad was, and they expect me to be great too, but I'm just me, and I can barely even remember my dad. And he wasn't as perfect as they say he was: if he was perfect, he would still be here!"

It was late and she knew she shouldn't have yelled. She regretted it as soon as it passed her lips, but it was too late to take it back. Alphonse didn't chastise her for her volume and didn't try to reassure her that her ideas were ludicrous. Instead, he dug his hands deep into his coat pockets and sighed.

"Did you know that my mom died when I was four?" Alphonse asked, and Elicia shook her head.

"It was hard," he said. "My dad wasn't really around, so it was just Brother and me and we had a neighbor who'd look after us. The thing I remember most about her was the funeral." His golden eyes were sad as they stared down at her. "Brother spent the whole thing really mad that our dad didn't show up, but now looking back, getting angry was his way of dealing with it."

They'd walked nearly to Elicia's school, but she kept letting him lead. She didn't know if he had a destination in mind or if he was too lost in memory to make such a decision.

"My mom," Alphonse continued, "was a good person. Kind and thoughtful. She believed the best in everyone. She actually is the one who encouraged our alchemy, and she was the best mom you could imagine. Except…" he took a breath.

"Except I don't actually remember most of that," he said quietly, his words nearly lost to the wind. "What I know about her is mostly what I've gleaned from Granny and Brother. I don't remember the sound of her voice and the way she used to talk. I only have a few pictures to jolt my memory.

"Everyone's told me that she was a really compassionate person and that I'm a lot like her, but I don't know that. She must have been flawed too, right? But when someone dies, their imperfections get glossed over, so the dead can feel larger than life."

"Yeah," she said, kicking a pebble in her way. The bag had grown heavy on her shoulder and she was wishing she'd packed lighter. "It's just… everyone talks about my dad like he's perfect, and I'm so very… not. I'm not even doing that good in my classes."

Alphonse stopped walking, and after a few paces, she paused too, turning around to see Alphonse watching her.

"Your dad wasn't perfect, Elicia," he said softly. "He sometimes put work over his family, and he used to drive everyone crazy with all of his family pictures."

"I know, I know," Elicia said, unable to keep the petulance out of her voice. "I've heard all about it before."

"No," he said. "Everyone talks about it like it was just a cute thing Hughes did. But, Elicia, almost everyone hated it. I once saw your Uncle Roy hide in a pile of smelly garbage after you got your first haircut. It drove everyone bonkers."

"Really?"

" _Really," Al said. "And Hughes was pretty smart, but he got in over his head and he was too darned stubborn to get out."_

"That doesn't sound like him," Elicia said.

"The dead were once human too," he said. "We all have our faults, and when people die- especially when they go so long before their time- we like to clean up their legacy. And they become saints in the eyes of the people that knew them."

He began walking again, this time she could see that he had begun heading back towards her apartment.

"Elicia, you're right. You're not perfect, but your father wasn't either. And your dad knew you weren't perfect. He didn't care. He loved you anyway. If he was here, you'd be embarrassed by how much affection he'd give you and how overbearing he'd be. You don't have to do anything to sustain Hughes' legacy. Just you being here is enough. It was always enough for him."

"Alphonse?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"What about you? What about your mom? How'd you move on?"

That the question was deeply personal barely phased her. Alphonse wouldn't lie to her, and he didn't avoid the truth like some of her dad's friends did. She'd learned early on that asking questions about her dad only led to narrow lips and furtive glances, as though she couldn't understand their meaning.

"That's a hard question because you don't ever move on," Alphonse said slowly. "You'll always feel a part of you missing, but… my mom loved gardening, so I started planting flowers, and that made me feel closer to her. Doing things I know that she did, and getting to know her memory, her real memory, the best I could."

They were nearly back to the apartment, but Elicia wasn't ready to go inside. They stopped outside the front steps, and Alphonse sat down on the top stair and gestured for her to do the same. She plopped down next to him without any of his grace.

"I wish he was still here," she confessed quietly. "I wish he wasn't such a good soldier and that after he married Mom, he would have quit. Then I'd still have him."

"It's easy to look back on what could have been," he said. "The 'what if's' can drive you mad, Elicia."

"I know," she said with a sigh. "Is it selfish to want him back even if it takes away all of the good things he did?"

Alphonse put his head in his hands for a moment, and she worried she'd said the wrong thing, but when Al's face emerged he stared deep into her eyes.

"Elicia," he said. "What I'm going to tell you, you can't repeat to anyone. It's a secret that not many people know, but you deserve to know. Can you promise not to tell anyone?"

If his face wasn't so tense, she'd think he were joking, playing a childish game of pretend, but his eyes watched hers carefully, and she nodded.

"Do you know what human transmutation is?"

She shook her head, "Does it have something to do with alchemy?"

"Yeah," he said. "It's trying to bring the dead back to life."

She couldn't hold in her gasp.

"Edward and I," Al continued. "We tried to bring our mother back."

"And?"

Al's face twisted into an uncharacteristic derisive smirk.

"You can't bring the dead back to life. Ever. We tried and we paid the consequences for that," he said. "Do you remember when I was in a suit of armor?"

"A little," she said. It sounded absurd, but she could almost recall the first time she met Alphonse. And he was tall, much taller than he was now. But that couldn't be, could it?

"I lost my whole body," he said, never taking his eyes off of hers. The gaze was intimidating, and she wanted to look away, but she didn't have the guts. "Edward lost his limbs and eventually to get my body back, he lost his alchemy."

"Really?"

Al nodded.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. Most of the stories she heard about her dad or any of the past were severely and obviously edited to omit anything that she wasn't 'ready' for. She was thirteen, not three. But Alphonse was confessing something deeply personal to her, and she didn't understand why. She was just Elicia Hughes, the kid of an old friend of his.

"You're a good listener, Elicia," he said. "But more than that, you know what it's like, don't you? If you had the alchemy books, you'd be much the same as Ed and I were. You want to bring back your dad."

"I wouldn't ever use alchemy to do it," she said, suddenly afraid he was using himself as a cautionary tale.

"No, of course not," he said, and she lost the tension in her shoulders. "But you know what it feels like. To lose someone really important to you and to… lose the memories, feeling them fade year by year." He shifted his body so he faced the quiet street instead of her. "Running away isn't the answer. You know that."

She made a non-committal grunt.

"If you want to go, I won't stop you," he said. "I'll be forced to tell your mom in the morning, but if you want to go, go."

"Huh?"

Alphonse smiled, "Take it from someone who knows. Running away from your problems doesn't help anything. It just exacerbates them. If you don't face them head on, they'll always haunt you."

"But I don't have any problems! My life is good and I have friends at school and my mom is really nice but… but…"

"But your dad's not here," Al supplied quietly.

"Yeah." She tried to stop them. She really did. But there was no stopping the tears which she'd sniffed back at least a dozen times earlier in the day. This was so embarrassing.

But Alphonse didn't seem to mind. He wrapped his arms around her, and guided her to his shoulder. Her whole body shook as she sobbed into his jacket, and he kept rubbing patterns into her back and murmuring gentle platitudes.

She finally separated from him and wiped a few remaining tears away with her sleeve.

"Sorry," she said hoarsely.

"No need to apologize," he said. "Don't apologize for feeling. That's what makes us human, and when I was stuck in the armor, I couldn't cry at all."

"Not at all?"

"Nope, and when I finally got out, I cried all the time. Over everything. If the market was out of fresh fruit. If I accidentally tripped over the dog. If I saw a cute baby. Everything." He tilted his head to the side, his golden hair reflecting the dim light from the awning. "Crying isn't something to be ashamed of. It's a beautiful thing. It shows you care about something."

It didn't feel beautiful. Her face felt flushed and tear stains graced her sleeves and Al's jacket. But when Al smiled, she didn't feel so embarrassed anymore. And crying did make her feel a bit better.

"Do you really think my dad would be proud of me? Even though I'm nothing special," she asked quietly. She almost didn't want an answer, but Alphonse's quiet demeanor had a sneaky way of coaxing out truths.

"Absolutely," he said. "There's no doubt about it. He didn't brag about you to all of his friends and every stranger he met because you were some kind of freaky genius baby." Elicia bit back a laugh. "He loved you unconditionally because that's what parents do. You could have grown another head and breathed fire and he would still love you just as much. You don't have to live up to his legacy, and he wouldn't want that to pressure you. I didn't know him for that long, but all he wanted was for you to be safe and happy. He would have done anything to make that happen. Even if it caused his death.

Elicia, he wasn't just a good soldier. He served to protect his family. He-"

"You mean his death was my fault?" she asked, a sinking feeling overwhelming her stomach. She'd always known she was to blame for his death, but she hadn't ever had it spelled out like that for her before. Her brain started spinning at super speed, and she didn't realize she was panicking until Alphonse grabbed onto her shoulders and helped her breathe in and out slowly.

"You did not cause your father's death," he said once she'd calmed down a little. "The only person to blame is the person who pulled the trigger." He made a strange expression but pressed on. "You had nothing to do with it. Your dad was too smart for his own good."

"I'm not smart," she said.

"There are many different kinds of intelligence," he said. "Edward is like an alchemic genius, but he doesn't understand anything about automail. And vice versa for Winry. You have to find what you're passionate about and you'll find your path."

She didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. They sat on the steps in front of her apartment building in silence, the cold pavement beneath her starting to make her shiver.

"Let's get you back inside," Al said. "Unless that is, you've decided to run away. In which case you should probably do it before you catch a cold."

"No," she said quietly. "I'll go back inside."

"You don't have to," he said. "Don't go on my account. Only go back if you want to."

But all of the fight was out of her. All she wanted to do now was to crawl under her covers and sleep for days. They trudged up the stairs side by side, and when they reached the fourth floor, Al held the door open for her.

"Thanks," she muttered, and all of a sudden, they were standing outside of her apartment. She didn't know what to say. He'd shared some really private stuff with her, but she couldn't reciprocate. She didn't have any cool life stories to tell.

He probably regretted telling her anyway.

But when she watched Al and his easy smile and kind eyes, she didn't feel like the little kid who should be pitied like she had felt earlier today. It made her feel grown-up, and like she was entrusted with one of Al's most precious secrets. He had told her those things; that had to mean something.

"Elicia," Alphonse said. "If you ever want to, you can come stay in Resembool for a few days. It might be fun to get out of Central and get some clean air in the country. We'd be happy to have you any time you wanted, as long as your mom agrees."

"Really?"

"Absolutely," he said, and she couldn't keep her face from beaming. But before she turned the doorknob into her apartment, Alphonse put his hand on her shoulder.

"And, Elicia, if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm always here. Just a phone call away."

She wouldn't ever call him. She wouldn't impose on his life like that, but her hesitancy apparently showed, and Al reaffirmed that he would gladly talk to her at any time about anything on her mind.

"Why would you do that for me?" she asked, staring at him defiantly, almost daring him to name her father as the reason, but he didn't.

"Because I know what it's like growing up and feeling like a part of your life is missing. And besides," he said. "You're a remarkable young woman."

"But-" she interrupted.

"Yes, you are," he said. "It's not about grades or test scores or any stupid thing like that. It's about being a good person. You're kind and thoughtful and you're a good listener. Surely you've shown me that much just tonight."

She didn't know what to say, so she started towards the door again.

"It's true," he said.

She stood in front of the door, and only the immediacy of goodbye let the question she most feared fall from her lips.

"Is it wrong to blame him for what happened? For him not being here?"

She spoke quietly, and Al didn't say anything for a moment, and she suddenly felt stupid, and she made to go back inside when Al finally replied.

"No, it's not. Brother used to be a State Alchemist in the military, remember? But he's retired now. He lives a quiet life in the country with Winry. Maybe in part because our dad wasn't around a lot, and he knew how important it was to be there for your family." Al sighed. "It's okay to wish your dad made a similar choice, but... the reason he served in the military was so important to who he was as a person. He couldn't have gone home and left the dangerous work to other people. That's just not who he was. Remembering him is knowing that he was as human as any one of us."

She didn't cry, but she could feel tears pooling in her eyes. She could at least hold them back until she got back to her room.

"I mean it though," Al said. "Whenever you want to come visit, just give us a ring. We'll be happy to have you."

"Thanks," she said thickly, still choking back emotion.

"Happy birthday," he said, though it was far past midnight now.

"Thanks," she said. "For everything."

Al stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. She didn't open her door until he had turned the corner, in part wondering if he'd stick around to see that she'd gone inside. But he didn't, and that trust filled her with pride.

She snuck back through the apartment and to her room, which she eased open slowly. When she plopped herself and her bag onto her bed, she expected the tears to flow immediately, but they didn't. She dug under her bed and pulled out an old birthday gift from Uncle Roy and Aunt Riza: a scrapbook of her dad when he was younger.

She turned the pages slowly, as though she hadn't flipped through it hundreds of times, but as she stared into the dark eyes of her dad, cloaked beneath square frames, still laughing at something Uncle Roy had said, she didn't feel the pang of betrayal that she'd associated with her dad for so long. Instead she suddenly felt thankful that she had these photos and these people to help her remember him. For so long she'd felt like her father's legacy was trapped in the repetitive stories her dad's friends told her, but these pictures defied that simplicity. They were snapshots of moments that Uncle Roy, Aunt Riza, Uncle Havoc, and probably even her mom had forgotten, but she still held onto them, frozen in time as though her dad were still a young cadet meeting Uncle Roy for the first time.

Al had said he took up gardening to feel closer to his mom. She suddenly knew exactly what she wanted to do.

When she visited the Elrics in Resembool during the next spring break, she had dozens of photographs to show them: of her friends and her school and her life in Central. She watched them pour over the shots she'd taken, and she felt closer to her dad than she'd ever felt.


End file.
